


all the good that won't come out

by LowerEastSide



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Books, F/F, F/M, Greengrass sisters - Freeform, Overuse of Metaphors, Romance, Young Love, arranged marriages (or an attempt at them), bookshops, kissing in the stacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-21 03:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15548406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LowerEastSide/pseuds/LowerEastSide
Summary: Let's talk about all our friends who lost the war, and the novels that have yet to be written about themOr: the Greengrass sisters write their own love stories.





	all the good that won't come out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [untilourapathy (gwendolen_lotte)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendolen_lotte/gifts).



> untilourapathy: I cannot thank you enough for all the hard work you put into helping me with my Big Bang. Sticking with a long chaptered fic for months is hard, and you really whipped my writing into shape. I love your work, and I adore the way you write the women of the Harry Potter universe, so I was inspired to write a story for these ladies. Hope you enjoy this.
> 
> Thanks to Bixgirl for the beta and encouragement! Title from Rilo Kiley.

The bookshop is Daphne’s refuge from the world. Stroking the spines, flicking the pages of tomes that have gone unsold for so long that dust has gathered on the otherwise pristine shelves - these are rituals that ground her. Like the steaming cup of coffee in her hand, prepared the same every day.

Like tea with her sister every Friday until she’d run away.

 _Eloped,_ Daphne’s inner voice not so helpfully supplies.  

Yes, Astoria is gone, although she’s promised they would return. ‘They’ being Astoria and Draco Malfoy. Off on the continent, doing Circe knows what, _married._ To each other. They had married each other.

“Honestly, I did you a favour,” Astoria told her on the single Floo call she’d made. “Mum had that party to introduce him to _you,_ and we know how that would have gone.”  

Daphne had protested she didn’t need to be _introduced_ to Draco Malfoy; she’d sat behind him in one class or another for six years. Always behind them, the other Slytherins. Behind the scenes, behind the times. She never minded; Daphne was no attention seeker. If a tiny spark of envy had pricked, sharp around the temples where headaches began, whenever she saw Pansy Parkinson card her fingers through the fine silk of Draco’s hair, that hadn't meant she wanted _him._ She simply wanted at least a little company to herself. A friend.

Astoria had been her friend. It was them against the world, after her sixth year at Hogwarts, the whole family hiding out in Montreal waiting for the war to blow over. Pure-blood ideals were important, but not enough to die for.

Now it was Daphne against the world, musty books as her only shield. She’ll have to make her own match.

“Stop lying to yourself, Daph,” Astoria’s voice had crackled through the fire. “Boys aren’t your cup of tea. And you’ll do fine without me.”

But Daphne doesn’t want to drink tea with anyone else.

Sylvia Greengrass had been irate when her younger daughter disappeared with the boy she’d hoped to marry off to her eldest. It was an insult to her careful planning — no matter that it netted Malfoy Manor and whatever depleted fortune Draco retained. Now she’s licking her imaginary wounds in Malta, Father in tow, and Daphne lounges around the London townhouse alone. When the afternoons stretch out too long to bear, and she tires of watching long shadows creeping in over the veranda —

_What sunset is Astoria watching now?_

— she noses through the vacant rooms, feeling like a snoop in her own home.

In the attic, dust motes drift in the air and catch in Daphne’s brown-gold hair. Behind two rolled-up carpets and a possibly cursed chandelier she discovers a box of forgotten novels, written by wizards but too Muggle in taste to be left down in the library. With nothing better to do, she perches on a broken wingback and reads all day. None of the books are satisfying — she anticipates the plot within fifteen pages and hates every single character. Insipid women and bull-headed men, convinced that love is the answer to all of life’s problems.

Yet she finishes four of them as the sun sinks outside.

Eventually her eyes get tired and she tosses the last paperback over her shoulder; it lands against a sheet-covered mirror with a _thunk._ Daphne slowly slides off the chair, too bored to even find the energy to sit up. She splays out on the dusty floor and grey streaks her skin like animal stripes.

She goes to sleep without bathing and wakes in the morning on a bed that looks like ash.

 >>><<<

“I’d like to trade these in.” Daphne sets the stack of unsatisfying novels on the counter of the bookshop. She’s come on a Monday, not her usual, attempting to escape the ennui of the townhouse. The clerk is hidden behind a shelf to the right, but Daphne speaks facing the door. “May I have credit?”

“No cash.”

“I didn’t ask for cash,” she states with irritation, turning back to the counter just as the clerk steps forward. “I asked for - Pansy?”

“You asked for me, hmm?” Pansy speaks in a drawling tone that raises Daphne’s hackles. She’d listened to that high-pitched voice and it’s lower counterpart jeering and judging for years: girl and boy, dark and pale, two sides of the same rude Galleon. She’s trying not to think about Draco; it certainly doesn’t help to see his former partner in harassment in her favourite shop.

“I would never.” It comes out harsher than intended, and Pansy’s face shows hurt for just a moment before she fixes it with a more familiar sneer.

“Too good for me?

That stops Daphne in her tracks. She’s never thought she was too good for anyone. Not good _enough_ , surely. She backs down, begins unstacking her trade-ins. “What, er, brings you to this job? Love of reading?”

“Tch. I couldn’t care less about books. The witch who owns this place is blind. She hired me because she liked my perfume and has no idea who I am.” Something in her voice doesn’t ring true. Daphne is well aware that Matilda can hardly see anymore, but she isn’t shallow, and has a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of her stock. She’d expect the same of any clerk.

It’s fine. Daphne understands. She wears defensiveness like a well-worn cloak herself, after all.

Pansy thumbs through the stack. “I can’t give you much credit for these. Bernhilda Bloomfield is a hack, these all have the exact same plot. Boring romance, near-death experience, blah blah.”

“Don’t care about books, hmm?”

Pansy goes red. “Eight sickles.”

Daphne takes the promissory note, turns to browse the shelves for something to use up her credit. She keeps one eye on Pansy the whole time. Eventually she selects a memoir by a witch who went to live in Italy to learn traditional Tuscan divination methods.

Silently she brings it to the counter, where the two women stand facing each other for one long moment. Daphne knows this moment from the countless choose your own ending books she read as a child. A fork in the road, a hundred forks. Choices.

Pansy starts, deceptively light. “I've been meaning to read that one. Tell me how it is later.”

It’s an olive branch of sorts, and Daphne accepts. “So you do read.”

“I stayed with my grandmother after the war, out in Bristol. I had nothing to do for three years except read. She died, I had nowhere to go, I’m qualified to work here. Short story.” She’s clearly expecting derision; Daphne doesn’t oblige.

“I like short stories.”

Pansy looks away, her jaw stubborn but a small smile flickering at the edges of her hard-set mouth. “Me too.”

>>><<<

She returns on Wednesday.

Usually this is the day Daphne sneaks out to Muggle London, because the pub nearest her home has what they call a ‘ladies night,’ albeit in the afternoon. No strange men approach her while she nurses a glass of dry red wine, or even gin. Last week the bartender asked for her number, though. She’s a pretty thing, late twenties and fire-red hair, but Daphne had simply stared at her wide-eyed until both of them became uncomfortable. It seems safer to go to the bookshop, even with Pansy waiting there, sharp remarks resting on the tip of her tongue like throwing knives.

The detente they reached two days ago holds. Daphne browses while Pansy dusts, twirling her wand lazily and vanishing the mess. She doesn’t go in the back stacks, Daphne notices.

There is a small display out front of the newest post-war book, written by an ex- _Prophet_ reporter who fancies themselves a historian. Daphne pauses next to it and hears Pansy snort.

“That's a load of tripe. Mostly wanking over Longbottom.” It’s so dismissive that Daphne feels thrown back to fifth year. She hasn’t heard anyone speak of the mostly-Gryffindor heroes of the war in anything less than glowing terms since the Greengrasses returned to England, prepared to pretend they had never even considered supporting the losers.

“I missed it all,” she answers vaguely. Pansy makes another rude noise and snaps her wand, flicking the _Open_ sign to _Closed._

“I’m getting lunch. You can come if you want.”

She doesn’t want. Daphne played at following Pansy around once before, when she was still a child. Now she needs to be the main character in her story. Obviously — she can’t depend on anyone else.

But when she opens her mouth to decline, the words aren’t there. Because Pansy doesn’t look expectant, she looks nervous, her eyes trained somewhere over Daphne’s shoulder, nail-bitten fingers twirling her wand. It was an invitation, not a demand.

“Yeah, sure.”

The cafe is Wizarding, but on the outskirts of Diagon. Pansy orders for both of them, anxiously filling up the silence with platitudes about the menu.

It occurs to Daphne that living in the same dorm for six years does not mean she and Pansy have any real concept of the other’s feelings. If that sort of proximity doesn’t breed familiarity, can anyone ever know each other? It’s terrifyingly solipsistic.

Her loneliness is a living thing, skulking in her undergrowth. Daphne must take the first shot before she is devoured.

“I finished the book,” she begins.

It’s the first chapter in a tentative friendship. Pansy has a Stonehenge-sized chip on her shoulder, but she responds eagerly to any sort of kindness, and Daphne has enough to spare with the glaring absence of Astoria. Even if they have little in common at first glance except reading, there are enough novels in the world to keep the conversation going for some time — or at least an hour past Pansy’s break is over.

It becomes a standing date.

 >>><<<

Sylvia Greengrass still has a network of gossips in London — she’s more popular than she used to be, in fact, leveraging her distance from the war with every other family on that blasted list of twenty eight — and she calls a month into Daphne and Pansy’s strange acquaintanceship.

“We’re climbing a ladder, dear. Don’t let me down like your sister.”

Daphne brushes soot off her crossed legs and doesn’t make eye contact with her mother. “I don’t follow.”

“The Parkinsons are over. There’s no need to clutch on that girl’s coattails any longer.”

“It’s only lunch.”

“Still, best avoid her. Now you won’t believe who I’ve run into on my holiday! Edith Macmillan. I do believe you were acquainted with her son at school? He’s been accepted for an internship…”

It’s easy to tune her mother out. Sylvia talks about climbing a ladder, but Daphne knows she’s a rung, something for men to place their feet on while they try to grow taller. There’s no room for dreams in that world, no room for fantasies. The fact that Astoria made what should have been a pleasing match all on her own, yet is being shunned for it, betrays the whole conspiracy: it’s about control. Daphne can’t even bring herself to be angry at her mother — this is the only power she has now, plotting and using her daughters as game pieces for the honour of a name she wasn’t born with.

Daphne has no idea what she’s doing with her life, but she _does_ know she won’t be marrying Ernie Macmillan. The next step in any good _bildungsroman_ is striking out on one’s own. The minute her mother’s face vanishes from the fire, Daphne scrounges up some powder for an outgoing call.

“Hello?” Pansy’s confused face appears. She probably hasn’t received a call in as long as Daphne hasn’t made one.

“Do you know a good place to rent a flat?”

>>><<<

Pansy doesn’t know a good place. She knows a rather sketchy broker, who brings Daphne to a wizarding neighborhood that’s seen better days. No rentals, only for sale. The house is now surrounded by Muggle developments on three sides and positively falling apart. There are two storeys and an attic, no elves, and hardly any furniture.

It’s perfect.

As soon as Daphne verifies the Floo connection is strong, she signs over three-quarters of the vault she came into on her seventeenth birthday and keys herself into the wards. Merlin knows how she’ll furnish the place or keep up on the repairs. Pansy has ideas for that as well, it turns out, dragging Daphne across London to second-hand shops and Muggle boot sales. They come back with shabby tables, chipped teacups, a wardrobe that’s missing a drawer, and one gorgeous chair that hides a pointy squeaky spring under its purple velvet upholstery. They giggle as they hide around corners and surreptitiously Apparate with their finds. It’s girlish and immature even as Daphne is confronted with the reality of adulthood.

Pansy herself is a revelation. Now that she isn’t desperately trying to impress anyone, her sharp wit is charming rather than cruel. She’s smarter than Daphne would have ever guessed and keen on trying every flavour of take away. They spend days at the shop or sweeping out the new house; at night they read, paper containers of rice or curry or pizza between them, lost in their own worlds of adventure but occupying the same space.

Alarmingly, Pansy is also quite tactile once her guard is down. Daphne should have anticipated this, after watching Draco lay his head in her lap or on her shoulder day after day seeking out the inevitable petting. Now she’s on the receiving end of Pansy’s attentions and it twists her up with a million butterflies. It isn’t _unpleasant,_ but she feels compelled to react the same way that fifteen year old Draco had — with a look down Pansy’s shirt. And possibly a kiss.

Rather than ruin their now thriving friendship — her _only_ friendship — with inappropriate advances, Daphne holds her tongue. But she’s curious, and the next time Pansy’s fingers tangle in her hair she brings up the first person who comes to mind.

“Why don’t you speak to Draco Malfoy anymore? I thought he used to be your boyfriend.”

The fingers still. “He married your sister,” Pansy says, carefully drawing her hands away. Daphne misses them immediately.

“I’m well aware of that. I wonder why it wasn’t you.”

“Draco was never my boyfriend.” There must be an entire history behind that simple statement from the definitive way Pansy speaks. Daphne wants every part of it, beginning to end, theories and speculation. Instead, she reaches up and slowly places Pansy’s hand back on her head. After a moment the stroking resumes.

Some things are written between the lines.

>>><<<

There is one elf still living at the Greengrass townhouse, and Daphne instructs him to only give her forwarding Floo to Astoria if she calls. When she finally does, Daphne nearly misses her, jumping off the step-stool she’s been using to reach a bit of moulding that needs to be plastered and running full tilt into the sitting room. The flames are just about to go out.

“Hi!” She’s breathless and covered in flecks of paint. Astoria raises an eyebrow.

“Are you remodeling?”

“Just a bit of tidying up.” The ceiling will probably start to leak if she doesn’t finish.

“I can’t believe you bought a house,” Astoria laughs. “I suppose I’ll see it soon. I think we’re heading home in a month.”

 _We._ The image of Draco Malfoy in her shabby sitting room, pointy nose in the air, is absurd. “I suppose you’ll be living in Malfoy Manor when you return.”

Astoria lights up. “Actually, we’re going to buy a house, too! Or a flat, I’m still not sure. We’d like to be close to London, for you of course, and Draco has applied to a potions apprenticeship.”

“That’s… nice.” Circe, Astoria is only _nineteen,_ and she’s already settling down. When it was a whirlwind trip through the continent, it wasn’t quite as threatening. But Daphne has held onto her worry for Astoria for as long as she can remember, nursing it almost like a grudge, and she knows the next step after marriage and household.

“I know you’re upset with me for leaving, but please don’t blame Draco. I need you both to get along. I love him, Daphne.” There is wonder in Astoria’s voice, a spark that Daphne thought had died with the Healer’s words when they were teenagers. _Blood curse. Lucky to see fifty, if only you don’t have children._ Haunted pronouncements their parents never spoke of again. It had fallen on Daphne to hold Astoria as she cried. Her responsibility, for so very long, and now someone else is looking after her.

“He’s nothing like you think of him, he’s _everything,_ I can’t even begin to describe it—”

“Does he know?” Daphne hates to cut her off, she calls so rarely, but this is madness. “Did you tell him you can’t give him what he wants?”

The fire spits as Astoria huffs. “He wants _me._ ” She sidesteps the question, and Daphne wonders how much Draco actually knows about her sister’s illness.

“He’s a man. He’s a Malfoy. He wants a legacy.” _They all want that, a shiny thing in their big house and a baby that looks exactly like them._

“You shut up,” Astoria hisses, and the spark is gone now, she sounds like Sylvia when they first found out. _Are you sure? Not my daughter!_ A possessive desperation, layered with denial. “He doesn’t care about any of that, it’s why we ran away!”

Daphne feels terribly guilty for poking holes in Astoria’s happiness, but she can’t help herself. “He’s never mentioned children? Really? Never hinted at the future, talked about taking back what’s his?”

“He hasn’t asked.” Silence falls but for the quiet roar of the flames, and Daphne thinks she can see the gears turn in Astoria’s head from thousands of miles away. Finally she speaks again. “But would it be so terrible? I’ll leave him in the end, no matter what.”

“So _terrible?_ You know you can’t!” Now Daphne is the desperate one. “You should be taking care of yourself, not off on some odyssey.”

“I told you I’m coming home.” This time she doesn’t say _we._

Daphne has guarded Astoria’s secrets as if they were her own, so she intimately knows why she wouldn’t want to share them. But this was marriage, there were contracts and promises. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell him.”

“I didn’t think I had to. He said… he said it would be alright if his parents _disowned_ him for eloping.” Astoria sighs miserably. “I just felt so special, so loved. I didn’t want to upset him.”

It was selfish of her, but understandable. And what a joke, for her to find a man who loved her enough to throw away such a legacy — or such a burden, and maybe Draco and Daphne have more in common than she thought — only for Astoria to volunteer her life anyway. That would be a tragedy, and Daphne’s read too many of those.

>>><<<

Daphne doesn’t want to think anymore, doesn’t want to hear Astoria’s words echo in her mind, rattling through the empty house. _Would it be so terrible?_ She goes to the bookshop almost as soon as it opens, insinuates herself into Pansy’s work as if she’s employed there as well. But she can’t stop flipping the pages of the Floo conversation back to the beginning over and over again. Eventually it becomes too much to keep to herself.

“He’s going to kill her!” Daphne blurts out, about to reshelve a novel. Pansy simply arches a brow.

“I don’t recall,” she tilts her head to the angle of the spine, “ _My Lover the Merman_ involving homicide, but it has been a while since I read it.”

“No, it’s— Draco. My sister.” It sounds stupid now the words are out, hanging heavy in the air. All the colour drains from Pansy’s face.

“It that really what you think of him?” she asks flatly.

“I didn’t mean _murder._ ” How to explain?

“Because Draco couldn't hurt a fly,” Pansy continues. “He’s proven that. I didn’t realise you bore grudges.”

The defensiveness is unexpected at this juncture in their friendship. “I didn’t know you still cared that much about him.”

“I don’t. I don’t know if I do, at least. But I thought you understood that people could change.”

Pansy goes down to the basement before Daphne can reply; she figures out what conversation they were actually having a few moments later. But she gives Pansy space, and three customers have come and gone before Daphne seeks her out. She speaks to her from the staircase.

“I’ve nothing against Draco. He seems to treat Astoria well, from what she’s told me. _Everyone_ is terrible when they’re in school.” Pansy doesn’t turn around to face her, but she does put down the inventory sheet she’s holding. “And,” Daphne continues “if you can become such an amazing person, I’m sure he could as well.”

That brings a faint smile to Pansy’s face. “Amazing, huh?” Her brow furrows. “Then why are you worried he’ll hurt your sister?”

It isn’t really Daphne’s business to share Astoria’s secrets, but she needs to make Pansy see what she meant. “She’s sick, she shouldn’t have a baby. The healers said it could kill her.”

“Are they breeding already?” There’s a resentful tone in Pansy’s voice.

“No, but… that’s what they do. Men and women. People in love.”

“I don’t think love has much to do with children in our families.” Pansy sighs and walks over to the staircase, looking up into Daphne’s face. “Are you jealous?”

 _Jealous? Of Astoria for being happy? Of Draco for being with her?_ She hesitates, not knowing the truth.

“Because I know there was an intended match between you…” Pansy adds doubtfully, and Daphne comprehends.

“Oh! Jealous of Astoria _over_ Draco? Merlin, no.” Pansy picks at a splinter on the rail, the thought of a match between Daphne and Draco obviously making her uneasy. But why, if Draco was never her boyfriend?

_Perhaps…_

Daphne repeats herself. “No.” Full with intent, she places her hand over Pansy’s and stops her from worrying the splinter. “Boys aren’t my cup of tea.”

Pansy freezes, and for an awful moment Daphne thinks she’s misjudged. Then their eyes lock; Pansy rises one step while Daphne descends until they are face to face, lips a breath apart.

A door slams above and the moment is broken. Pansy slips past her to go man the counter, and Daphne draws a shuddering breath before she also climbs the stairs. This could go either way, she thinks: an end or a beginning. She’s never been able to put a book down before the end, even if it’s drivel, and she won’t let this go unresolved, either.

It’s a quick transaction, and Pansy watches the customer leave before flicking her wand at the door. The sign flips to _Closed_ and Pansy prowls out from behind the counter, hips swinging, mouth predatory. Daphne backs up against the shelf, floored by the likely fulfillment of her desire, still a bit afraid of it. She can spot a kissing scene a mile away, but nothing she’s read has prepared her for the reality of Pansy’s lips.

 _This is why people fall in love,_ she thinks as the corners of the self-help section dig into her spine.

>>><<<

Not much changes between them. The shop, the house, the nights spent in silent company, these all remain. Only now there are sure hands and hot mouths and soft breasts as well.

Pansy insists there is something wrong with Daphne’s kitchen, but she also insists on using it for her strange cooking experiments. Today Daphne half-listens to her complaints from the sitting room as she browses the employment section of the _Prophet._ She has circled three promising adverts when a knock comes at the door — and who uses a door anyway, when the Floo is open?

It’s Astoria.

She pushes past Daphne, throwing that gigantic purse she stubbornly carries onto a chair without a backward glance. Lipsticks and train tickets and coins from several Muggle countries go spilling across the floor with a clatter. She heaves herself across the couch without removing her coat, her breath unsteady, her eyes wild.

“Astoria — what the hell?” There’s a noise in the kitchen as Pansy rummages through the pots and pans, but Astoria doesn’t notice, doesn’t ask who’s there. Instead she starts crying.

“I couldn’t do it, Daphne. Not to him.”

 _Oh._ Daphne sits down gently next to her weeping sister. “You couldn’t tell him?”

“I told him.” She wipes her nose on her sleeve. “I told him, and he was so _good_ about it. So _understanding._ He wasn’t even mad I didn’t tell him before! Said he couldn’t imagine what I’ve—” she stops to sniffle again— “What I’ve gone through!”

Daphne still has trouble reconciling the selfish creature she knew as Draco Malfoy with the man her sister always describes. But then she thinks of the woman in the other room, wrestling with the oven, and even thinks of herself, and knows how much a person can change, given the right motivation.

Astoria rambles, barely pausing for breath. “He said I'm all he needs. But that's just it, if I’m all he has I’ll leave him alone one day and he doesnt deserve that. He’s made such an effort to see the world as a better place, to be a better person, I can’t lock all his happiness in me and then go.” _Leaving_ and _going_. Daphne aches at these euphemisms.

Digging in her pockets, Astoria finally pulls out a tissue, some napkin embossed with a hotel logo on the corner. “We can get it annulled. He has cause, under the law, since I can't… Well. We can do it without a fuss.”

“You could. But he won’t.”

Pansy strides into the room with a tray of cups. One, two, three: all mismatched, even their saucers. She sets it on the table and takes a seat on the squeaky chair without saying hello. “I don’t care how much he’s changed, Draco doesn’t know how to do things without a fuss.”

Astoria stops sniffling and stares at Pansy agog. “What the hell is Parkinson doing here?”

“Cooking dinner.” She shrugs. “Or, trying to at least. I think the oven is hexed.”

Slowly Astoria slides her gaze between Daphne and Pansy, taking in her sister’s blush and Pansy’s obvious comfort in her home. “Oh my god.”

“Shut up.” Daphne looks away quickly. “This isn’t about me.”

“It is now. Is this why you moved out?”

“No. You know I couldn’t stand that house anymore.”

“Does mum know you’re shacked up with Parkinson?”

Pansy watches the exchange with amusement.

“We aren’t—! There is no _shacking up!_ ”

“Perish the thought,” Pansy adds dryly. “This place is falling apart.”

Astoria breaks out in hysterical laughter. “We are both so disowned.”

“Mum didn’t _disown_ you. She’s angry you went behind her back but she’ll get over it.”

“Now I have to go crawling back.” Astoria blows her nose loudly. “This is such a mess. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Do you love him?” Pansy asks her abruptly.

“What— how dare— yes!” Astoria sputters.

“Then stop being a child.” Daphne almost jumps to her sisters defense; it’s an instinct after all. But Pansy forges on. “I’ve known Draco since before I had a wand. For him to disregard his parents’ expectations and run away with you, he must _really_ love you.”

Astoria nods miserably. “That’s why I have to let him go. I don’t want to hurt him.”

“I don’t presume to know how much he’s told you about… Well, the war. But you must know that Draco’s choices were made for him through most of his life. If he chooses to be with you, to stay even though he knows you’re ill, you should respect that. He’s earned the right to make decisions for himself.” Daphne watches Pansy as she speaks, wonders when she began to find maturity so attractive.

Astoria seems to consider her words. She has the look of a person who _wants_ something but doesn’t know if they’re allowed to take it. “I just feel so selfish,” she says hesitantly. She always was more concerned with the effect her illness had on other people, rather than herself.

Daphne puts one arm around her sister. “Pansy’s right, you can’t make his choices for him. But I think it’s alright to be selfish sometimes, especially when it comes to love.” She says the last part more to Pansy, and receives a soft smile in response.

A horrible sound comes from the kitchen.

“Oh! My timer!” Pansy springs from the chair (which gives a beleaguered, squeaky groan) and flies to the possibly hexed oven.

“If you stay for dinner,” Daphne whispers, “pretend you like whatever it is.”

Astoria’s laughter is muffled where she’s pressed her face in Daphne’s shoulder. “Alright.” With a more serious expression, she pulls away. “I should go, actually. I sort of ran here after we arrived by Portkey in London. Draco’s probably worried sick.”

Daphne thinks she herself loves Draco a little bit, for cherishing her sister. “You didn’t tell him where you were going?”

“No. We were heading to Wiltshire to see his parents, and everything felt so… real. When it was just us on holiday, it seemed like a fairytale. I guess I just didn’t want to face the reality of what he’s giving up to be with me.”

“Don’t think of it like that. Think of what you’re both gaining with each other.” Her own domestic bliss has mellowed her opinion on her sister’s young romance.

“Is that how it is with Pansy?”

“It’s…” It’s soft smirks, eager kisses, and warm hands followed by cold feet under the blankets. It’s bitchy yet hilarious comments on irritating customers, it’s too little salt and too many spices. Pansy’s presence in her life already feels like the dog-eared pages of an old favourite.

Daphne nods mutely and Astoria, still tuned into her sister, perfectly understands. “I’m glad we both gained something, then.” _I’m glad we both got away,_ each sister thinks.

A bang, and the distant sound of Pansy cursing the oven and all its descendants, gives them both a giggle fit. Astoria stands up. “OK, go help your girl. I’ll send an owl when we’re settled in.” They embrace, and she uses the Floo this time. Daphne heads back to check on Pansy.

She’s sitting on the floor with her arms crossed and flecks of white flour in her black hair. There’s a strange oily smoke hanging in the air, scented with fennel, which causes her to sneeze repeatedly. Daphne thinks she’s beautiful.

“Are you two finished blubbering?” Pansy asks. Daphne nods. “I’m so glad I’m an only child.”

“She’s gone off to find Draco.”

“I cannot believe that swot found someone so darling to hang onto his coattails.” There’s a fond tone to her words. Daphne thinks they will have to host the smitten pair for dinner soon. Takeaway, if she’s smart.

Slowly she slides down the cupboards to sit beside her girlfriend.

“Move in with me.”

Pansy eyes the kitchen dubiously. “Only if we can perform an exorcism on the appliances.”

Once, Daphne thought being with someone would be an epilogue to her life. As she tangles her fingers in Pansy’s hair, smearing flour between them, she hopes this is only the first in a long series of happy moments.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr!](https://lower-east-side.tumblr.com/)


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